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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29075871">Lost and Found</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/citrusella/pseuds/citrusella'>citrusella</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Zombie Club Chronicles [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Steven Universe (Cartoon)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Car Accidents, Gen, Halloween, Hospitals, Major Character Injury, Rose's Fountain, slight gore (mostly gem related) in first chapter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 10:08:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,030</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29075871</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/citrusella/pseuds/citrusella</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a hard year without Steven.</p>
<p>Or: People in Steven's life react to him going <s>missing</s> <s>dead</s> missing one Frightnight, and they react to him coming back.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Connie Maheswaran &amp; Steven Universe, Greg Universe &amp; Steven Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Zombie Club Chronicles [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019761</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>lofi fanfics to practice social distancing to</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Lost and Found</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Ooh, my first multi-chapter in this universe/timeline! (Character tags reflect what I'm pretty sure I'm <em>going</em> to write--I know I'm going to write Greg and at least one gem but I'm not sure who so I stopped at Greg.)</p>
<p>Set in the "Zombie Club" universe so the first (and optionally the second) in this series are recommended reading.</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Connie is the only one to bear witness to the aftermath, though she doesn't yet know what happened.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warning for light gore midway through this chapter... nothing too awful but described kind of intimately.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Connie is leaving a Frightnight party with Daniel and Patricia when Lion rips a portal open and pops out right in front of her.</p><p>"Whoa!" Daniel shouts.</p><p>Patricia hides her stifled laugh behind her hand, remarking, "Guess you have a ride?"</p><p>Lion growls.</p><p>This isn't normal.</p><p>"Guys, this isn't normal," Connie says. "Something's… off." She approaches Lion and cups her hands around his snout, whispering, "Does Steven need help?"</p><p>Lion lets out an earth-shaking roar in response, summoning a portal and knocking Connie to the ground. "—I'll take that as a yes," she breathes, regrouping and climbing onto Lion's back.</p><p>"Guess we'll find out what this is all about later?" Daniel cocks his eyebrow as Patricia shouts a "see you later" to a halfway-through-the-portal Connie.</p><p>Connie doesn't know when she leaves that she will never, <em>ever</em> tell Daniel or Patricia about this night.</p><p>…Though the thought of such a thing crosses her mind the second she's on the other side.</p>
<hr/><p>Lion's portal deposits her in the emergency room of an unfamiliar hospital. Steven is alone on the bed.</p><p>Which can't have been the case for long, and probably won't stay that way for more than a minute or two, perhaps even just several more seconds, since this appears to be a trauma bay—she knows from her mom's job that it's usually for life-threatening injuries, that it's usually bustling with constant activity.</p><p>(Oh, geez, what will she say if she gets caught, dressed as the Kindly Spirit from <em>Overneath the Underworld</em>, with a giant pink lion?? Maybe the face paint is enough to obscure her identity…)</p><p>She does her best to contain the urge to start pushing at his shoulder, attempting to rouse him. He's… in bad shape. He's covered in cuts and bruises, there's blood on his clothes, his left hand looks broken, and even from where she's standing on his right side she can see the edge of the blow, the open wound on the left side of his head.</p><p>Looking over him again quickly, she catches his gem under his ridden-up, mangled shirt glint off the fluorescent lights above him and what she sees makes her blood run cold.</p><p>It almost looks as if it's been shattered inside him; the facets are dull and fault lines run all over its surface. No part of it is unmarred. It looks like it's falling apart, threatening to break away from itself, right there in its spot where his belly button would be.</p><p>Given the state of his torso around it, there must have been some sort of direct impact to his gem or something… Some sort of gem fight? Did someone see his gem and want it, then rough him up when they couldn't take it?</p><p>She doesn't have much time to wonder before someone at the nurse's station shouts at the sight of her steed blocking the room's window.</p><p>
  <em>Thank you, Lion, but you could have been less conspicuous!</em>
</p><p>She makes a split second decision, one that would go against everything in her if it were anyone else, anyone <em>human</em>. The Kindly Spirit lifts her broken best friend into her arms, rips off anything attached to him that might impede what she does next, and climbs onto Lion, ignoring the screams from outside the room as she directs, "Rose's Fountain. <em>Please</em>."</p>
<hr/><p>Steven is, barely-audibly, mumbling something she can't understand when they jump through the portal.</p><p>He makes no sound at all by the time they come out the other side.</p><p>Not a good sign. Not a good sign. Not a good sign. Not a good sign.</p><p>Lion, for once, has spawned them as close to their destination as possible, instead of the polar opposite. She silently thanks him again and makes a mental note to get him <em>so many</em> Lion Lickers once this is over.</p><p>She hefts Steven off of Lion and sits him on the edge of the fountain, debating whether to scoop water out of the fountain or lower him in.</p><p>…She just needs the essence on his gem, right? It can do the rest… right?</p><p>She pulls his shirt up enough to clear his gem, tries to keep the party food still on her stomach down as she sees the extent of the damage to his midsection, then cups her hand and deposits the fountain water on his gem. She waits a moment.</p><p>Nothing happens. The plains, valleys, and mesas misaligning the chunks of his gem's front facet <em>should</em> be telling her healing him might be more complicated than that, but she ignores the pull of her pragmatic brain just this moment.</p><p>She tries again. Nothing. Some of the torn flesh around his gem starts to heal, but nothing world-shattering.</p><p>…Was this a <em>Steven-shattering</em> kind of injury?</p><p>Anxiously, as if she's about to touch someone's liver or something, she cautions a poke at one of the edges of his gem.</p><p>It moves… like a… loose tooth or something. …Is it even still attached to him?</p><p>The decision doesn't come as fast or as easy as the hospital room, but she comes to the conclusion: She'll… she'll…</p><p>She'll have to pull it out.</p><p>Hand trembling, she grasps around the edges.</p><p>She's not White. She's not White. She's not White.</p><p>When most of the rim doesn't detach from the skin of his abdomen as easily (maybe the bruising and swelling can account for some of it, considering she can barely get her fingers around the thing, but then again, considering there are deep gouges in other areas…), she tries a different approach, working at each cracked piece around the edge.</p><p>She starts with that first loose one. She wiggles it like it's her key to meeting the <strike>tooth fairy</strike> cracked gem fairy, getting a little rougher than she's comfortable with until there's this sickening kind of movement under her fingers that makes it clear it's separated. A shiver shakes up her spine as she tries to brush off the feeling that maybe she's doing the wrong thing.</p><p>She goes to work on the next, and the next… every time one separates from his organic half it's worse than the last, like she's pulling off each one of his fingernails one by one at the root, leaving the whole of his nail bed exposed underneath.</p><p>Sometimes she draws blood. Sometimes it looks as if the edge of a crack drew blood before she even got there. She occupies her mind by putting her thoughts full force into the scientific side of things—how is it attached to him, what does it do for his bodily functions, how does it work together with his human half?</p><p>It gets harder to do it, not easier, as she separates more of the gem. She tries to ignore how long it must have been, how clammy he's getting. How it was dark right after the party in Delmarva, but at the fountain, in Western Europe, miles away from the light pollution of a city, it's… advanced dark. It's okay. He's still breathing, even if it's shallow.</p><p>He's fine. He <em>has to be</em> fine.</p><p>When the last bit comes free, she lifts the gem from his middle and tries not to think about how the deepest part of the gem feels as it pops free from his other half like a scab that's been picked and pulled at too much, tries not to look at the natural result of a sharp point having poked harder than it typically does into (half-)human flesh with gem powers no longer protecting it. She dunks him into the fountain without a second thought, being careful to rest his head above water.</p><p>When she gets a look at the gem, it's obvious that it wouldn't have taken very much more to fully shatter it. Held together by just the point, the pieces threaten to blossom open like she's at Lone Star Bunkhouse and the gem is a Blooming Onion. Maybe they just weren't connecting enough to heal? Maybe the sorry state of his stomach kept them from aligning just right, like a bone that's been set wrong? She doesn't know. Maybe she doesn't care?</p><p>She holds it—the gem and her increasingly freaked-out train of thought—together and pushes it under the fountain water, too.</p><p>Some of Steven's injuries start to close; some are almost nonexistent now, at least for the parts of his body in direct contact with the fountain water. Others take a rest stop at scarring first.</p><p>Scarring is a part of healing, after all.</p><p>His gem glows in her hands. She lets it go. She glances over at his other half, still out cold, the water working its magic at a snail's pace, if that.</p><p>…Why is it going so slow?</p><p>She can start to guess, but she refuses to entertain the thought, what that would mean.</p><p>It's… it's just healing him from bottom to top, from the inside out… that's all.</p><p>His gem has reformed below her. She looks down at him, not making a point to look very closely but yet still noting that he's reformed in what looks like Steven's customary daily clothing choice… yet something's different that she can't put her finger on at this hour, in this situation, in this light. As if testing something, she says his name, but he says nothing in return.</p><p>She's had less than five minutes of experience with him, but she… knows that's just how he is. She lets out a shaking sigh and, after looking him over again, turns back to his other half.</p><p>She touches his cheek.</p><p>…He's colder than she expects him to be.</p><p>She refuses to entertain what that could mean.</p><p>She shakes his shoulder altogether too hard; she says, <em>shouts</em>, his name. It's not working, he's not waking up, he's not—</p><p>No, no, this is all wrong. He's fine. He's okay. He's just… in a coma or something, right? The mess on the left side of his head still isn't healed; maybe that's it, maybe—</p><p>His gem half pulls at him and she almost doesn't want to let him go, but she trusts that he'll… what? Heal him? Fuse with him?</p><p>She <em>doesn't</em> expect him to jump out of the fountain and run through one of the many arches in the fountain's courtyard, human half in tow.</p><p>She chases after him.</p><p>He runs faster.</p><p>She can't keep up, but Lion charges up next to her. …Something's off again.</p><p>She climbs on his back, intent on following her friend, and Lion roars open a portal.</p><p>She resists the urge to rage, scream, considering what time it is when she comes out the other end onto her tiny front yard.</p>
<hr/><p>When she comes in the front door <em>far</em> after curfew, she doesn't answer her parents' questions about where she's been.</p><p>When her mother asks where the new red spots on her previously all-white costume came from, she lies and says someone at the party had a blood pack on their costume and some of it ended up on her.</p><p>When her father asks why she hasn't been answering her phone, she lies and says it must have died. No way is she letting them know it's because she was miles from any tower and, besides, she was roaming.</p><p>…They know something's up, but they don't push it.</p><p>It comes up in therapy at her next appointment, though—but even there she lies as much as she feels like she can get away with. If she was to tell the truth, she knows the therapist would have to do something, but what is he going to do about someone on another continent he has no control over who is <em>honestly probably okay anyway</em>?</p><p>She doesn't tell Mr. Universe about that night until a few days later (she can't bear to tell the gems, so she's glad he ends up doing it for her), and she only tells him at all because she feels awful hiding it from someone else so close to Steven.</p><p>Of course, she only mentions healing Steven and then him running off… not… everything else.</p><p>He's <em>missing</em>.</p><p>
  <em>Not dead. Not dead. Not dead. Not dead. Not dead.</em>
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